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Culture October 13, 2016
Have you ever been in a space where you were conscious of being the only woman there? Maybe you were in an engineering program over the summer and felt as if you didn’t belong. Sometimes you were mistaken for a secretary, facilities worker or even an intruder.
This is what it’s like to be a woman in STEM. In America’s fields of science, technology, engineering and math, women make up only 24 percent of the workforce. Although shocking, these statistics aren’t surprising. By the time women enter high school, only 0.3 percent have plans to major in computer science.
In the United States, 74 percent of middle school girls express interest in STEM. Between middle and high school, this interest is not sustained and by the time women graduate college, high-paying STEM job openings are most often filled by men.
Many businesses – including a major website you’re definitely familiar with – have taken note of this disparity and are starting to take action. In 2014, Google launched a campaign called “Made with Code” to inspire women to join diverse fields aside from the humanities. The program encourages all left-brained women to join STEM, but especially focuses on women in computer science.
The campaign stresses the necessity of coding in the digital age as well as the need for women to be a part of this fast-growing field. Made With Code’s website claims that anything can be created with code, such as entertainment films and apps for smartphones. To illustrate this, Google has developed free coding projects – such as one that allows you to create your own emoji – to prove that coding is fun.
This project strives to encourage the equal growth of computer science majors in both young men and women. In a video for Made With Code, Danielle Feinberg, a director of photography for lighting at Pixar Animation Studios, reflected on her time spent at Harvard University. She remembered her male colleagues saying things with such confidence that she believed them to be speaking the truth. But she soon realized that “these guys didn’t actually know any more than [she] did. They just believed in what they thought.” You know what they say: Confidence is key.
Encouraging women to participate in fields of STEM – particularly computer science – through simple, fun games is sure to create confidence in women who don’t think they can succeed in those fields. With programs like Made With Code, more women are encouraged to enter the STEM fields in the future.
